It's a known psychological phenomenon that some people can't help telling tall stories in one breath and actually believe their own divagations. But deep-down they know they're stretching it thin - and yet can't help themselves.

I don't know if you've ever encountered these cases. In flesh and blood, so to speak. The person seems pretty normal, maybe a bit hyper though, and he just keeps going on and on about things that just sound too unreal - and yet he obviously believes what he's saying, and at the same time is scared to death that you might catch him out on some of these (he or she, btw, I've seen both). So you don't - you don't point anything out, you play dumb and you act kind. Because one psychological fact about this is that somebody who resorts to unconscious lies is too low on himself to believe he still has some truths to tell that would be enough to lift him out of that lowlessness he sees himself in.

Dostoevsky described this type perfectly, for all ages to come - the cast-out drunkard who has not one shred of anything left to hold on to in the world, and those tall tales are the only pitiful thing that he can build some dignity upon. How crazy is that? It is crazy. Some people are so utterly, so profoundly destroyed they have no other choice - they don't lie on purpose, and there is no malice in such lies. Yeah, they're crazy. You'd be crazy too, if your life put you that low.

What can you do for such an individual? Nothing at all. Absolutely nothing. All you can do is show some good humour and take it easy and buy into everything and not be scandalized that you're being taken for a ride. It doesn't matter. You're in the presence of pure desperation, such that you rarely see otherwise among standard people. Nobody's crazy on purpose. Sure not.

But it does require that you be flawless yourself. You gotta hold two completely opposite attitudes at the same time - knowing better all the way, combined with complete belief. Mind-twisting? Yes. You dance on a dime. Don't get yourself manipulated, albeit willingly but not unknowingly. Because you're in the crazyland and you gotta hold on to some of your own normalcy - but not too much.

The greatest difficulty is sadness. Overwhelming sadness and helplessness at seeing someone so beyond it. Nothing you can do. Except tough it out regardless and not defend yourself through judgment. Too many times I've been incapable of sustaining this line because it's too overwhelmingly sad and it kills you. That sadness is the fear of your own possible madness setting in - we all carry these seeds inside us, coming in contact with madness brings it out, that's where fear comes from.

Fear and rejection. You want to flee and hide from this. You don't want to know. The most susceptible ones are the ones most in fear of their normalcy getting shattered. Cetainly that would include me on various occasions.

***

I've said as much about fear of self-killing - how people are so deathly afraid of suicide and how their judgement of it is so profoundly skewed on that account. Because it's there in you too, it can become if you let it loose. Who could have guessed, n'est-ce pas?

The ingrained fear of euthanasia, for example. Forget all those pompous arguments that go against it. The one and only argument is that you're scared shitless of the whole idea - as it applies to who you are, your idea of how life should be. You can't possibly ever find yourself in such an improbable unthinkable situation that you might wish for your own death. Nops - this is out of the question. Life can't deal you such a hard hand. God of all life is too kind, he won't let this happen, he won't let you fall that low, lose your will, your reason, your grasp on life.

The fear of death is linked to that inability to look life in the face - to see all the horrendous suffering that happens to various people for no reason whatsoever. You look and you don't see - because you can't see yourself in what you see. You absolutely refuse to envision that this crazy fuck out there clamoring for his own death might be you - some time later. It's too frightening. So you'd rather "protect" the crazy fuck from himself - all the while imagining that somehow this will protect you.

Basically, when it comes to rot and suffering of life, you lose all your democracy - it happens to others, who are too weak. You otoh may never go so weak, ever.

But this is not strength - this is fear. Stupidity is most frequently born out of that fear that underlines all your most shining beliefs. The nothingness that lies underneath faith in life - you walk on water and you might sink, but you can only so walk while you don't know you might sink. This is the origine of all stupidity - not having the guts to look because you might miss your step.

Amen. Those who talk most about their faith and their beliefs are those the most in fear of losing their step. Eyes wide shut - for fear.

(wasn't it Kierkegaard who blathered about innocence living in fear of nothingness? he twisted it rather out of proportion)